manner conformable to the different modifications through which they pafs, before they return to their primitive state. He therefore divides them into two claffes, vitrifiable and calcinable: the fubftances of the first clafs undergo no change from the action of fire, unless it be carried to a degree of heat capable of converting them into glass; while thofe, on the contrary, of the fecond clafs, are reduced to calxes, by the action of a fire confiderably lefs violent. The calcinable fubftances, or matters, though confiderable in number throughout the globe, are yet few in comparison with those that are vitrifiable. The fifth fat above mentioned, proves, according to our Author, that the former owe their existence to another period, and a different element; and it appears evident to him, that all the matters, not immediately produced by the action of the primitive fire, were formed by the intervention of water; fince they are composed of fhells and other fragments of marine productions.

After a particular enumeration of the different matters that are fufceptible of immediate vitrification, our Author obferves, that all the matters which are converted into calxes, exhibit, in this change, not their primitive, but a fecondary nature, which they have contracted, by paffing through filters in which they have degenerated from their original character of glaffy fubftances; they are all compofed of madreporas, fhells, and of the caft fkins and carcaffes of thofe aquatic animals, which alone can convert liquids into folids, and transform the seawater into a ftony fubftance. All this, fays our Author, may be proved, by an attentive infpection of thefe fubftances, and by an observation of the remains and fragments of nature.

Thefe remains are, firft, The fhells and other marine productions, which are found at the furface, and in the interior parts, of the earth, and belonged to fpecies of animals that are not obferved in the adjacent feas:-fecondly, Skeletons, remains, and bones of elephants, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses, which are found in Siberia, and the other northern countries of Europe and Afia, in fufficient quantities, to convince us, that those animals which cannot now propagate their fpecies any where but in the fouthern parts of the globe, exifted and procreated, in former times, in the regions of the north. It has been observed, that these remains of elephants, and other terreftrial animals, are not fituated far below the furface of the earth, while the remains of aquatic animals, and marine productions, are found at a much greater depth in the interior parts of the globe. The teeth and bones of the elephant, and the hippopotamus, are not only found in the northern parts of our Continent, but also in North America, though in this latter region thofe animals are un

known.

By

By comparing these remains with the facts, our Author is led to conclude, that the formation of vitrifiable matters, takes its date from a much more remote antiquity than that of the compofition of calcareous fubftances; and on thefe data, he founds the first five of the Seven Epochas of Nature, contained in this volume.

The firft epocha was, when the matter of this globe being in fufion, by the action of fire, the earth affumed its form, and, by its rotatory movement, fwelled under the equator, and flattened under the poles ;- -the fecond,-When the matter of the globe, becoming folid, gave rife to the formation of the great maffes of vitrifiable fubllances; the third,-When the fea, covering our continents, nourished thofe fhell-fifh and aquatic animals, from whofe remains calcareous fubftances have been formed; -fourth,-When thofe feas that covered our continents retired, and the volcanos began to act; and the fifth, (as clearly indicated, fays our Author, as the preceding,--which we may believe without any great stretch of faith)-When the elephants, and other fouthern animals, inhabited the regions of the north,-a period much later than the four now mentioned as is concluded from the fituation of the remains of thefe terreftrial animals, which are much nearer the surface of the earth, than those of marine animals.

Our Author was fenfible, that wags, hiftorians, and philofophers, would all join in an outcry at this paradox; he, therefore, has collected materials to prove the fact; and then he makes ufe of the fact to confirm his favourite hypothefis. His reafon ng amounts to this-there are great quantities of ivory, and bones of elephants, difcovered daily in the northern regions of Europe, Afia, and America:-from hence it follows, that thefe animals (which can only fubfift, and, in effect, do only fubfift, at prefent, in warm countries) muft have formerly exifted in the northern climates-and therefore, that the frigid zone must have been then as warm as our torrid zone is at this day.

M. DE BUFFON refutes the objections that may be made to his hypothefis, by thofe who maintain that the facts here alleged may be accounted for by other caufes, fuch as inundations in the fouthern parts of the globe, which drove the elephants towards the north, where they left their carcaffes, having perished by the intenfe cold of that climate;-he alfo endeavours to fortify his hypothefis against the reports of thofe travellers, who maintain, that the ivory found in Siberia is that of the Morfe, or fea-cow-he, finally, combats the reasonings of those, who, though difpofed to think that the northern climates were much warmer, in days of yore, than they are at prefent, yet attribute this difference, not to his refrigerating fyftem, but to a change of

M m 4

the

the obliquity of the ecliptic, as, confidering the mutability of the inclination of the earth's axis, our globe might formerly have revolved upon an axis fufficiently different from its prefent one, to have placed Siberia under the equator.-We leave the curious reader to examine, in M. BUFFON's work, the folidity of his answers to these and several other objections: we hope to give, foon, an account of a work, which will open new views upon this fubject, and diffolve into air the gorgeous bubbles that our Author has been blowing with fuch ingenious efforts, in his theory of the earth, and his epochas of nature. But let us continue, and hear him out; for in his reveries there is entertainment, and always inftruction, of fome kind or other.

After having rejected the explication of the discovery of elephants bones in Siberia, given by Gmelin, and others, he explains this phenomenon by, and ufes it in fupport of, his brilliant hypothefis. He accordingly obferves, that the earth could not país, all at once, from its original ftate of fire-caufed fluidi. ty and liquefaction, to a mild and temperate warmth: the tranfition must have been gradual; and the climates, at the pole, like all the others, paffing through fucceffive degrees of refrigeration, there must have been a period of time, nay, even a confiderable period, in the fucceffion of ages, when the northern regions, after having undergone the most ardent heat, muft have enjoyed the fame degree of warmth, that is found in the fouthern climates at this day ;-therefore, the elephants might have lived in Siberia-and therefore, they did live there, -and therefore, the earth was knocked out of the fun by a logger-head of a comet, and therefore, when it was knocked out, it had wit and contrivance, not to fall back again into its place, though liquid, but to whirl about the orb from whence it came, to cool by degrees,-and therefore, though nothing more nor less than a piece of glafs, it fent forth from its bofom, plants, animals, men, and women,—and therefore, glass is the principle of order, vegetation, life, intelligence, genius, nay, (if we go to firft principles) the original caufe of our Author's existence, and philofophical fyftem: pardon- therefore, gentle reader, the brittleness and fragility of the latter.

To the five epochas already indicated, M. DE BUFFON adds a fixth, and a feventh. The fixth, which he confiders as pofterior, in time, to the five others, is the epocha of the feparation of the two great continents. He is fure this feparation did not exift, when the elephants lived equally in the northern parts of Europe, Afia, and America (for their bones are found in Canada as well as in Ruffia)-Why not? Might not glafs and molecules produce elephants in America as well as in Afia, though these continents had never been joined? However, ac. cording to our Author's hypothefis, the feparation of the con

tinents

tinents took place in a period pofterior to the existence of these animals in the northern regions; but, as elephants teeth are found alfo in Poland, Germany, France, and Italy, he concludes from thence, that in proportion as the northern climates grew cool, the elephants fhifted towards thofe countries that are fituated in the temperate zones, where the heat of the fun compenfated the lofs of the internal warmth of the earth, and when thefe zones, in their turn, grew cold, the chilly beats continued their emigration to the climates of the torrid zone, where the internal heat of the earth has been the most durable, on account of the thickness of the earth's fpheroid in thefe regions, and where, alone, the internal heat of the globe, joined with that of the fun, is intenfe enough to maintain the life, and facilitate the propagation of thefe animals.

Though thefe fix epochas, in the Hiftory of Nature, are not marked by fixed points, nor determined by portions of time that can be exactly meafured, our Author, always bold in enterprize, undertakes the arduous task of comparing them together, eftimating their relative and respective duration, and bringing under thefe periods of duration other monuments and facts, which indicate cotemporary dates, and fome intermediate and fubfequent epochas. But before he enters upon this fingular eftimate, he obviates an objection which he forefees will be brought against his whole theory, on account of its attributing to the matter of our terreftrial globe fuch a remote antiquity, as is incompatible with the Mofaic account of the creation, and the 6000 years duration, which that account aligns to our globe. M. DE BUFFON cripples through this objection as well as he can, by diftinguishing the period of duration that intervened between the creation of matter in general, and the production of light, from that which intervened between the production of light and its feparation from the darknefs, and by confidering the fix days of which Mofes fpeaks, as fix periods of duration, which may be lengthened out, as far as is neceffary to accommodate them to philofophical difcoveries and calculations. Thus he bends the Mofaical narration to his hypothefis. He does more: if his explication of the facred writings, though plain and perfpicuous, fhould appear unfatisfactory to fome rigid maintainers of the literal fenfe of Holy Scripture, he defires modeftly (and we hope fincerely) that fuch perfons would judge him by his intention, and confider, that his fyftem, of the Epochas of Nature, being merely hypothetical, can, by no means, prove detrimental to revealed truths, which (continues he) are fo many unchangeable axioms, independent on every hypothefis, and to which I have fubmitted, and do ftill fubmit my ideas.'-We fhall make no commentary on these conceffions in favour of revealed religion, nor fhall we compare them with other parts of this Author's

writings.

writings. There is no kind of contraft fo difgufting to us, as that which affects candour, veracity, and moral character: we willingly turn away our view from it, and avoid, as much as duty will permit us, to difcover it,-in men, more efpecially, whom genius, talent, and good-nature, have made refpectable. -We therefore proceed in our analysis:

What has then happened in each of the Epochas of Nature, that have been already enumerated? Our Author answers this queftion, as if he had been present at each.—In the first epocha, when the earth, in fufion, was by its rotation on its axis, formed into the shape of an oblate fpheroid, raised and encreased in diameter at the equator, and flattened or diminished in diameter at the poles, the other planets were in the fame ftate of liquefaction, fince there is nearly the fame relation between their polar and equatorial diameters, that takes place with respect to our globe, confidering the difference that there is in the velocity with which they respectively move round their axes. The motion of Jupiter is much more rapid than that of the earth, and his globe, therefore, is proportionably more bulky, and raised at the equator, and fmall and flatted towards the poles. The velocity of the rotation of the planets is, therefore, the caufe of their density and protuberance at the equator, and their depreffion at the poles, which could not have been the case (according to M. DE BUFFON), if their primitive ftate had not been a ftate of fufion or fluidity. But whence this fufion or fluidity? We know (answers he) in nature, no fire, no principle of heat, but the fun, which was capable of melting and keeping liquefied the matter of which the earth and planets are compofed, and it is, therefore, to be prefumed (the conclufion, indeed, is prefumptuous enough, fince it refts only on our ignorance), that this terreftrial and planetary Matter belonged formerly to the very body of the fun, and was feparated, or dashed from thence, by one and the fame blow, or impulfion: nay, our Author calculates the lofs of the fun by this business, at a 650th part of his ancient mass.-The first age of the universe (he means the folar fyftem) was, confequently, that in which the earth and the planets, having received their form, acquired a certain degree of confiftence, and from fluid became folid bodies. This change was effectuated naturally by the diminution of their heat alone. The refrigeration (as is the cafe with all heated bodies) began first at the furface, previous to which all the planets were (if we will take our Author's word for it) nothing but liquid mafies of glafs, furrounded with a fphere of vapours. While that state of fufion continued, and long after, the planets were luminous bodies in themselves; nor did they become dark and obfcure, until they were folid, even to their centers. In their first periods, when they were intrinfically luminous, they must have

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